History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill

17 March, 2013

A sixteen-year old girl's photo album, 1947

As promised, the first installment of a photo album newly digitized (by me). My grandmother made this in 1947, when she was sixteen. It's her choice of snapshots about her life, taped into a loosely bound album of 28 black pages. Most of the photos are captioned on the reverse. For sharing I've photographed each page in its entirety, then each individual photo and its caption. I'll do about six pages a post (a couple are blank) for the next three posts (hopefully equating to the next three days--I'll try!).

The album's creator is Nancy Gallagher, sometimes also captioned "Nan" (she captions herself in third person, for the ages). Her sister is Barbara. I don't know who any of the other named people are and unfortunately I never had the chance to ask. The family lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, though they also clearly took a trip to California at some point.

I love personal photo albums-- the way people structure the narrative of their lives is absolutely fascinating. I hope you think so too!

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All images courtesy of their respective institutions or my personal collection, as noted. Images are either without copyright restrictions or used within the copyright conditions explicitly laid out by each institution. Every effort has been made to ensure proper sourcing and use; if any errors are noted, please let me know and they shall be remedied as soon as possible.

Though the photographs aren't mine, I do put a lot of time, thought, and care into ideas, finding photographs, selecting photographs, arranging them, and making sure they are well-sourced and captioned. Please don't copy a post in its entirety for your own site.